March Reading Thread

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Read Blood Grove by Walter Mosely.
I enjoy Mosely, having read about a half dozen of his books. This one (like all of his Easy Rawlins) is a detective period piece around life as Black man in greater Los Angeles. This in 1969. The action and interactions are gripping with lots of vivid characters and references to the times. A Black man could not drive a sporty car or enter a posh club without being stopped by guards or random racists. Easy Rawlins is always on the edge of being, arrested or attacked by police on the assumption that a (n word) had either no rights and was guilty of something or everything.
I was disappointed that as resourceful as Rawlins is, he constantly calls on rich and powerful that he met earlier in the series or who pop up as needed to resolve problems. Those interactions are a little too useful, frequent and opportune to my taste. In earlier books he relies on himself and a few friends. I would recommend this book to those familiar with Rawlins or earlier books to those who are not.
 
I'm having a go at The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz but I don't think I'll finish it, not my kind of story TBH
 
Tony Hillerman "Skinwalkers"
Seventh in Hillerman's crime series set in the Navajo tribal police. Gripping as ever. I find the interface of Navajo and non-Navajo unique as far as my own reading goes.
 
Julia Boyd's Travellers in the Third Reich ...

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd - 9781783963812

Travellers in the Third Reich by Julia Boyd, 9781783963812, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide.
www.bookdepository.com www.bookdepository.com

and Grettir's Saga in the now 50-years-old University of Toronto edition (translated by Fox and Palsson). A fourth reading, in fact.
btcl
 
I'm reading Ordinary Monsters, by J. M. Miro. It's a sad book, painting a grim picture of the world and of humanity. But at a quarter of the way through, I am finding it compelling, though grim is not my usual choice for reading material. Reviewers have compared it to Dickens, and I can see why (Bill Sykes would fit right in in Miro's London), but Dickens never wrote anything nearly so dark.

It quickly became clear who the titular monsters are, and they aren't the children born with extraordinary powers.
 
dask said:
My wife is a Hillerman fan.
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My wife is also. As am I. In addition to the social relations between Navaho, non-Navaho native Americans and whites, Tony Hillerman and more recently his daughter Anne Hillerman who has continued the series, constantly express a love for the land, usually through the eyes or thoughts of Navaho. Cultural details and viewpoints are also expressed in detail. (On occasion he has similarly represented Pueblo practices.)
I believe that he/they does this to truly represent the perspectives learned from friends who are Navaho.
Note: I remember that the Navaho Tribal Council declared him "A Friend of the Navaho People." A fine tribute, only made greater by the fact that as of a few years ago, he was still the only white accorded this honor.
 
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pogopossum said:
Finished:
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A festschrift to Grandmaster Jack Williamson, I bumped into it as I look up everything with a Zelazny byline. One can tell that the contributors were more than enthralled by Williamson and remembered him as an influence on their careers. It's a rogues gallery of great authors. Each gives a short memory of Williamson's effect on them.
A couple of tales imagine Jack's life as it might have been. Fred Pohl has him as an astronaut and the mayor of the first settlement on Mars. Connie Willis has him visited by fans from ???.
Specific stories (4) take off from his creation the Humanoids. Fred Saberhagen puts humans between them and his mechanical exterminators, the Berserkers. A particular tribute, Rock and a hard place. Others carry human resistance into a variety of forms.
Three (Poul Anderson, Mike Resnick, Jane Lindskold) come from Darker Than You Think, the epochal Williamson take on shape change mythology. I read that one when I was 13.
Giles Habibula, Williamson's talented, fat anti-hero take off on Sir Toby Belch/Falstaff, is the origin of a couple of stories (Paul Dellinger and David Weber) I remember my 23 year old brother (i was 13) asking my dad "Do you think that he's old enough for space operas? and handing me a copy of Habibula's The Legion of Space.
The Legion of Time is the origin of the last story, by John J. Miller. He found the original when he was 13 and said it as had "more potent ideas, colorful characters, and exotic locales than most novels five times its length." I read it at about the same age but found the 1952 swashbuckle language overdone. I certainly remember it.
Other authors, including John Brunner and Ben Bova, take Williamson's spirit of human achievement into original creations.
The stories are okay, but are particularly fun if you remember Williamson from an early age, as I do.
The book took me a long way back.
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Sold his first story in 1928 and died in 2006 ,was writing up almost until he died. His life and writing career spanned the Pre-golden age of science fiction era up to and including a large chuck of the modern science fiction era . He was one of the giants, coined the terms Genetic Engineering and Terraforming .
 
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Finished Beautiful Intelligence by our @Stephen Palmer at last. (Life and all as it goes.)

The story is about two teams that share the same corporate history, that are attempting to build and develop 'cognitive' artificial life forms but are taking two different approaches to the problem. I won't go too far into it but, some of the debates that are written into the story have played out on some of the threads here on Chrons in the last several months. This really got my interest into Stephen Palmers research and foresight ability as a writer.
I view is this book, in my opinion, as like 'Ghost in The Shell' (1st anime movie) meets 'Ex Machina', but on the run. A lot of elements in these two movies show up in this book, in my opinion. In all, I really enjoyed this story.

Now I am starting @Bowler1 'The Many' (I wonder if there are any pitchforks in it?;))
 
THX1138 said:
Finished Beautiful Intelligence by our @Stephen Palmer at last. (Life and all as it goes.)

The story is about two teams that share the same corporate history, that are attempting to build and develop 'cognitive' artificial life forms but are taking two different approaches to the problem. I won't go too far into it but, some of the debates that are written into the story have played out on some of the threads here on Chrons in the last several months. This really got my interest into Stephen Palmers research and foresight ability as a writer.
I view is this book, in my opinion, as like 'Ghost in The Shell' (1st anime movie) meets 'Ex Machina', but on the run. A lot of elements in these two movies show up in this book, in my opinion. In all, I really enjoyed this story.
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Thank you!
 
I recently read On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony. I was attracted by the premise of exploring death as a person - or in this case, an "office". I like the world shown as a place where magic and science developed side by side. However, I found this an adventure story with shallow characters, even though the author seems to believe it is a serious look at death.

I also re-read Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut. This remains one of my favorite books.
 
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